OnePlus Business Model Analysis

This assignment requires a detailed analysis of OnePlus's business model, focusing on two key changes: expanding its market presence beyond North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and incorporating an investors' block to demonstrate financial strength. The review will also consider relevant studies on innovation, competition, and sustainability in the smartphone industry, providing insights into how OnePlus can adapt and improve its strategy to remain competitive.

Running head: THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
The Market of One Plus
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
One Plus-the company:
One Plus is a Chinese smart phone company launched in December 2013 under the
leadership of Peter Lau, the former vice president of Oppo as its CEO. The company has its
headquarters in China and is the wholly owned subsidiary of Oppo. The main objective of One
Plus is to make models of mobile smart phones which would make high-end technology
available to the consumers at low prices (oneplus.net, 2018).
Mobile smart phone industry:
The mobile smart phone industry is an internationally spanning industry which generated
a revenue close to $500 billion. The industry is dominated by Apple and Samsung. The other
significant players are HTC, Oppo, Sony, LG and Nokia. The mobile smart phone industry is
experiencing tremendous growth worldwide due to increase in population, easy availability of
technology, deeper access of internet, rising income of people and the innovations in mobile
phone technology. The mobile smart phone industry is an integration of hardware making
companies like Samsung and software making companies like Amazon (Vuori & Huy, 2016).
The mobile phones companies also the development of the industry is supported by innovative
digital services called applications which enable the users to do a wide range of activities like
communicating, banking, shopping and a host of other activities using dedicated applications or
apps. Thus, the industry plays a very important role in the social context as well like enabling
people to communicate with each other and gain information using internet which otherwise
would have been inaccessible to them (Bousquet et al., 2017).
The mobile smart phone industry segments its market into two segments, the upper class
segments and the middle class segments. The upper class customer segments consisted of the

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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
rich customers who had sufficient disposable income to buy expensive high-end smart phones.
The main companies catering to this segments are companies like Apple and Sony. The second
segment of customers consists of companies One Plus which make low priced smart phones. The
companies like Samsung makes smart phones for both the segments. The main market of smart
phones was previously concentrated in North America and Europe. The recent trend of the smart
phone markets shows that the main markets are shifting towards Asian nations like India and
China. The market leaders like Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung competing to take
advantage of this emergence of the eastern markets (Cecere, Corrocher & Battaglia, 2015).
Market of One Plus:
The main market of One Plus can be divided into North America, Asia, Middle East and
Africa to a smaller extent. The main European markets are countries like Belgium and the UK
while Canada and the US make up the main North American market. The main Asian markets
are China, its home country, India and Malaysia. The present market segment of One Plus as
pointed out consist of the middle class people with limited disposable income who want high
quality smart phones. This market analysis makes it clear that One Plus faces both challenges
and opportunities. The main opportunity which One Plus enjoys is the weak competition in the
low priced band smart phone segment. However, its market image is largely responsible for
restricting the company’s reputation of catering to the middle class customers and consequent
lack of acceptance among the upper class customers. The competitors like Samsung make both
low priced smart phones as well, thus giving One Plus stiff competition (Maruta et al., 2016).
Products and services:
The main products of One Plus are smart phones which have advanced features and run
on Android platform. The peripheral products of the company include the hardware and the

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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
software which are used in the smart phones. The company also manufactures charges and ear
phones for its handsets.
The services provided by One Plus include round the clock customer services which
enables the customers to contact the company representatives as per their convenience. The
company has several service centres which provide the customers services like repair and
maintenance (Oh & Oetzel, 2017).

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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
Business model canvas and relationship between the nine blocks:
Key partners:
Suppliers of
mobile phone
parts.
Governments
(home
government and
host governments)
Employees
Management
Investors
All the other
stakeholders
Key activities:
Procurement of
mobile smart
phone parts.
Manufacturing of
smart phones
Manufacturing of
smart phone
peripherals
Marketing of its
products
Providing after
sales services to
customers
Value
propositions:
Providing high
quality smart
phones for
customers and
reasonable prices.
Meeting new
requirements of
customers
Providing
continuous
customer support.
Customer
relationship:
Long term
relationship
with
customers by
providing
high quality
products and
round the
clock services.
Customer
segments:
Middle class
customer
segments in
Asia, Europe
and North
America
Key resources:
Human resources.
Innovative
knowledge and
technology.
Hardware.
Software
Channels:
Retailers
Ecommerce
websites like
Amazon

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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
Package
Cost structure:
Fixed costs, variable costs and semi-
variable costs
Revenue system:
Sales of handsets, repeat sales
Relationship between the blocks of the business model canvass:
The business model canvas stands on nine blocks namely key partners, key activities,
value propositions, customer relationship, customer segments, key resources, channels, cost
structure and revenue system, all of which are interrelated and interdependent on each other. The
key partners consist of stakeholders or business partners of the company. For example, the
business partners of One Plus includes the apex management, the employees, the distributors,
wholesalers and retailers which sell One Plus mobile phones. The key activities of One Plus is to
produce high quality mobile smart phones which are affordable to the middle class customers.
The company seeks to increase the value of customers’ expenditure by providing its high quality
products (smart phones) and also round the clock customer support. The company operates
outlets of its own and also enters into business contracts with channel partners to provide after
sales services to customers to enhance their consuming experience. This value creation is based
on the target customer companies serve. As far as One Plus is concerned, the target customer
segments consist of middle class customers (Kotabe & Kothari, 2016). The key resources One
Plus consist of its human resources and strong financial backing which provides it the base to
carry out innovations to introduce new models of smart phones in the market. It must also be
pointed that the present CEO of the company has the rich of working with Oppo in a senior
position and moreover, Oppo is one of its important financers. Thus, its association with Oppo is

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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
also among its key resources backing its business models. The main channels which One Plus
uses to sell its mart phone consist of its outlets, retailers and ecommerce websites like Amazon.
These three business channels enable One Plus to market its smart phones in Asia, Europe and
North America, thus generating immense revenue. The company is able to diversify its immense
costs over its revenue base. This shows that the blacks of the business model are interdependent
(Vigneau, Humphreys & Moon, 2015).
Critical successful factors to achieve sustainability:
One Plus has mainly two critical success factors namely, it’s pricing strategy and its
market strategy. The company keeps its pricing low to make its smart phones affordable to the
middle class people. This strategy saves it from entering into direct competition with brands like
Apple because the latter does not cater to the middle people. The second strategy consist of
presence in Europe, Asia and North America which allows One cater to the huge middle class
population in these three markets and generate huge revenue. These two factors have earned
financial sustainability to the company which is boosting its further operations (Hoepner et al.,
2016).
Contribution towards downside risk:
The dependence of One Plus on Oppo for financial backing and its restricted market
image of a smart phone manufacturer for the middle class people can lead to down siding of risk.
One Plus is financially dependent on Oppo and restricts itself as the smart phone manufacturer
for the middle class people. This strategy in fact prevents the company from coming into direct
confrontation with Oppo which manufactures high priced mobile sets. However, the low priced
smart phone category is becoming very competitive with emergence of new smart phone
manufacturers. This means that One Plus should enter the expensive smart phone market to gain

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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
financial sustainability and compete with these low priced mobile phone makers. It should
transform into a public limited company and break away from Oppo’s ownership. This would
allow the company to compete with leading brands like Oppo and Apple (Giglio, Kelly & Pruitt,
2016).
Proposed changes to the business model:
The two changes which the management of One Plus should bring about in the business
model are:
Markets:
One Plus should expand its markets beyond its present markets. The main markets of the
company are the USA and Canada in North America, several European countries while its Asia-
Pacific presence is limited to China, India, Hong Kong and Australia. The company needs to
expand its presence into the other emerging markets like South America (Audrino & Hu, 2016).
Adding of investors’ block in the model:
The investor block would show the sources of capital which form the base of the
financial strength of the company. It should give information like main investors to the user of
the business model canvass (Heckmann, Comes & Nickel, 2015).

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References:
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effect. Econometrics, 4(1), 8.
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smartphone industry: Is there a dominant design?. Telecommunications Policy, 39(3-4),
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THE MARKET OF ONE PLUS
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